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You’ve probably heard ‘eating healthy doesn’t have to be expensive’ a million times, and then baulked at cost of your bill when your trolley is filled with delicious fresh produce. The truth of it is that there are some tricks to save you on your hard earned dinheiros at the checkout – and I mean, who doesn’t want to save a few bucks on their groceries?

How to Save $$ At Your Next Grocery Shop

1. Meal Planning

If you’re following the 12WBT meal plan, spend a little extra time customising your plan if you’re on a tighter budget. The beauty of our program means you can customise your week depending on your needs. If money is an issue, look at the food you have in your pantry or fridge at the moment and select meal options that include those ingredients, or select meal options that use similar base ingredients, so that you’re only buying one type of staple that you can reuse in multiple meals. Also keep an eye on your social calendar, so if you know you’ll be at lunch with work on a Wednesday, you aren’t buy ingredients for meal you don’t need. It’ll take a little more time to plan out your meals and your shopping list, but it will end up saving you a lot of money as you aren’t buying unnecessary ingredients.

2. Shop in the evenings

Let me let you in on a little known secret about supermarkets – you can save at least $20 per shop depending on the time of day. If you can delay your grocery shop until late evening, supermarkets will often slash the price of perishable goods. Depending on what’s on your shopping list, if you shop after 5pm the price of bread is often slashed by 40 percent, fruit and veggies are discounted by early evening whilst meat can be discounted all day long.

3. Compare Prices

If you’re committed to saving big, know where to split your shop. You may be surprised to learn your go-to grocery store might not be the best value, so even if you get your staples from budget retailers Aldi or catch.com.au and then hit your regular supermarket for fresh produce, you’ll still be doing your bank account a big favour.

4. Bulk Cook

It’s no secret that if you buy in bulk you can often save quite a bit of money – especially if you’re getting your staples from a a wholesaler like costco. So a great way to make the most of this is to cook bulk meals that are freezable. When you’re customising your weekly meal plan in the 12WBT meal planner, you can filter your suggested meal options with the freezable options. Whether you have a family, or are cooking for just yourself like me, freezing meals will save you money and time – and I guarantee you’ll be thanking yourself later when you CBF to cook after a long day.

5. Go Generic

Last but not least, off-brand and name-brand have very few differences. Don’t waste your money on brand-name products because of perceived value, often what that price difference equates to is nothing more than marketing and design costs rather than a higher quality product. Of course, this isn’t the case for everything, but as a rule of thumb it’ll steer you in the right direction.